successor

Forms

successor m (genitive successōris, feminine succestrīx); third declension^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin succēdō (“to come after, succeed”) + -tor.^[2][1] The verb is from sub- and cēdō (“to go, yield”), which goes back to Proto-Italic *kesd-e/o- (“to go away, avoid”);^[3] Lubotsky connects it with Sanskrit सेधति (sedhati, “drives away”).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first examples in Lewis & Short are in Cicero, as “the predecessor envied his successor”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

It is one who succeeds another in an office or position.^[2][4] In law it is one who succeeds to property, an heir, as in Tacitus' Germans, whose heirs and successors are each man's own children, with no will.^[2] Ovid uses it of the heir of Hercules' arrows, Philoctetes, and of a successor in poetry: “this one was your successor, Gallus, and Propertius his”.^[2]

Church Latin glosses it “successor, follower”.^[5]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero of a successor in office.^[4][6]
• 70–19 BC – Virgil.^[6]
• 43 BC–18 AD – Ovid of the heir of Hercules' arrows and of a line of poets.^[2][6]
• 98–115 AD – Tacitus of heirs.^[2][6]
• c. 1300 – Borrowed into English as successor, through Anglo-French and Old French.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A successor in office or position, a follower.^[2][4][1]
2. (law) One who succeeds to property, an heir.^[2]
3. A successor in a field of study or art.^[2]

Related words

• succēdō
• cēdō

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
4. ^ a b c d Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
6. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
7. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com